A320Fan, whilst I too am a fan of LBA I find your diversion facts interesting and surprising to say the least. I wonder how many pax were put out by these diverts both in and out of LBA. Given Jet2s 757s are not CAT3 I would guess these feature quite heavily in the divs out whilst a lot of inbound divs will be smaller things like KLM F70/100 from HUY and FlyBe Dash 8s from DSA.
I accept that the outbound divs hsve reduced since the CAT3 was installed, and can even remember a Ryanair 738 diverting into LBA when the LBA weather was worse than MME it's intended destination, in order to use the CAT3.
Back to the Ryanair base, I think DSA is more likely due to good Motorway connections and more importantly they already have more destinations served from there than from LBA plus there is hardly any spare apron space at LBA but plenty at DSA.
DSA are struggling to grow as quickly as hoped so they are more likely to give a good startup deal and terminal capacity is not an issue unlike LBA.
Ryanair dont fly from/to where the pax live they rely on low fares to get people to travel to where they fly from/to! If it were purely where do most pax live close to LBA would be the choice but they have built an airline on 1p fares to suck people into driving from Leeds to travel to LPL to catch a flight.
I hope I am proved wrong you never know they may move in and try to oust Jet2 with lower fares but I think it's unlikely, but they have to find somewhere to operate all these new 738s!
